


As They Always Have

by ChocoholicFangirl



Series: What Is Love (Single Dads AU) [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 16:12:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8851501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoholicFangirl/pseuds/ChocoholicFangirl
Summary: Set around the same time as Take Your Time
  It’s not the first time Hajime has thought of his best friend as attractive—it’s not even the tenth, the hundredth, Tooru’s good looks have been as much of a constant in Hajime’s life as his pettiness and intelligence—but for some reason this time he just can’t get it out of his head.

  Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Tooru, standing in his doorway, wearing a crooked smile. It’s so stupid, it’s happened a billion times before, Hajime babysits Tooru’s children all the time, and yet—
Alternate Title: Tooru's the World's Most Gorgeous Bartender





	

**Author's Note:**

> You ever get that feeling where you're extremely late on things you've promised your friends, such as:
> 
> 1\. a fic in which oikawa is a bartender if my roommate draws art for it, [which she did, like, months ago](http://ch-pineapple.tumblr.com/post/144239824099/iwa-chans-for-sarahs-bartender-iwaoi-fic-funny)
> 
> 2\. tiny tobio and tiny shouyou being tiny and cute, because who doesn't want that
> 
> So anyway, here I am, delivering on these promises, featuring Mandatory Oikawa Bitching About Ushijima

Hajime is having a crisis.

He’s certain that he’d seen Tooru in his bartender uniform before. They see each other so often, surely it’s impossible that Hajime had gone this long without seeing what Tooru looks like at work. And even if he hadn’t—which is impossible—it shouldn’t be a big deal, because they have been best friends since memory and Hajime has seen Tooru wearing anything, wearing nothing at all, seeing Tooru in his bartender uniform for the first time shouldn’t be a big deal but it is and Hajime is _absolutely doomed_.

It’s not the first time Hajime has thought of his best friend as attractive—it’s not even the tenth, the hundredth, Tooru’s good looks have been as much of a constant in Hajime’s life as his pettiness and intelligence—but for some reason this time he just can’t get it out of his head.

Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Tooru, standing in his doorway, wearing a crooked smile. It’s so stupid, it’s happened a billion times before, Hajime babysits Tooru’s children all the time, and yet—

He steps into the bar, looks around—he knows Kuroo and Sugawara come here frequently, not to mention Matsukawa and Hanamaki, but thankfully right now the bar is filled with strangers, mostly businessmen like Hajime.

Behind the counter, Tooru is trading somewhat one-sided repartee with his coworker (who must be Ushijima). He glances over; for a split second his eyes linger, widen, almost as if he didn’t quite recognize Hajime. Then his entire face lights up. “Iwa-chan!”

Hajime’s throat is dry. This is a Mistake.

 

* * *

 

“Sorry I’m late,” Tooru says, appearing in the kitchen doorway with a tired grin. He’s changed out of his uniform, Hajime notes with significant relief. “Here, let me.”

Hajime makes a protesting noise, out of habit, because Tooru looks exhausted and has probably been on his feet for hours, but he lets Tooru take over at the stove. It’s been years since they’ve really fought over working too much and not sleeping enough—Hajime realizes, now, that that’s just the reality of being a single father, staying up until three in the morning to earn that paycheck then getting up at six to make breakfast and pack the kids’ bentos. Now, they just make time for each other however they can, just help each other out as they always have.

And sometimes, when Tooru’s bizarre schedule and Hajime’s heavy workload makes it difficult for them to meet up for lunch or spend a weekend afternoon together, they just arrange for something like this: an extremely late dinner at Tooru’s house, Tobio tucked in on the spare futon in Takeru and Shigeru’s room upstairs, a whole week’s worth of work-related gossip and frustration waiting to be released.

“So then, Ushiwaka-chan’s boyfriends come in—” Tooru’s saying.

Hajime looks up from trying to maneuver his leaden hands into serving the rice. “Wait, which ones? All of them?”

“No, just Tendou-chan and Reon-chan.” Tooru, with a neat twist of his wrist, flips the stir-fry tofu and vegetables into the air and catches them with the pan. “So they come in, right, and Ushiwaka-chan gives them drinks on the house, but then he writes it down under his own tab, like he’s supposed to, _directly shaming me_ for giving free drinks to you and Suga-chan the other day.”

Hajime snorts at the pure indignation in Tooru’s voice.

Tooru continues as he pours out the vegetables over the rice. “And the worst part is, he’s not being passive-aggressive, he’s just such a morally upstanding person it’s _infuriating_!”

“No wonder he has so many boyfriends,” Hajime muses out loud. “I’d want to date that kind of person, too.”

“Iwa-chan, don’t _say_ that!” Tooru wails.

It takes many reassurances that Hajime was only joking for Tooru to finally stop pouting enough to say, “Anyway, so I went back and added the price of your drink to my tab, because I can’t let him beat me in skills _or_ in ethics. Here, it’s ready.”

“I don't think that's the right way to think about ethics,” Hajime suggests, but he is grateful for the familiar ground. Tooru’s his best friend. Nothing will change that.

 

* * *

 

Nothing except for Hajime’s own masochism, apparently, because he starts going to Tooru’s bar regularly—just for a quick drink, on the way to pick Tobio up from the after school volleyball club or Bokuto’s place or whoever now has to take care of him for twenty extra minutes while Hajime watches Tooru work.

Because he is fascinated by Tooru as a bartender. As someone who works a nine-to-five job that really becomes nine-to-nine where he wrangles Excel spreadsheets and types reports until his fingers are begging for mercy, the idea of finding one’s true calling seems like a nice myth at best; but Tooru looks so natural here, so charming, that Hajime honestly can’t imagine him doing anything else.

How did he _live_ before this, live without knowing what Tooru is like here, handsome beyond measure and tailoring each drink and conversation to each client?

“Here you go, Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, smiling as he slides Hajime’s drink across the counter. At least, he thinks, watching all the other customers beam at Tooru, he’s glad that Tooru has a job he’s clearly happy in. He's proud of how good Tooru is at mixing drinks. How good he _looks_ mixing drinks.

Hajime quickly downs the gin so that he can blame that errant thought on the alcohol.

“Right, Hajime-kun?” Hanamaki says, turning to him, and Hajime realizes with a sense of dread that he has no idea what they’re talking about, because Tooru had just rolled up his sleeves and Hajime hasn’t been able to look at anything else.

He swallows. His face feels hot. “Uh—sorry, what did you say?”

Hanamaki blinks; Matsukawa raises an eyebrow; Kuroo pauses in his laughing to give Hajime a knowing look. “Oh, nothing important,” Hanamaki says, airily. “We were just making fun of Oikawa for his uniform. He looks so dumb with a bowtie, right?”

Oh great, Hajime thinks. Yet another thing for my mind to devote ridiculous amounts of time to. “Right, uh, yeah,” he says, feeling growing despair in the pit of his stomach. “Yeah, definitely.”

Hanamaki snickers. Hajime flees the scene with an excuse about Tobio, lets the cold wind drive away the impure thoughts so that by the time he reaches Bokuto's apartment, he's 100% not thinking about Tooru’s slender neck. At all.

 

* * *

 

Hajime arrives early, but he hangs back in the doorway to the backyard for a bit to just watch. Tooru puts Shouyou on his shoulders, possibly solely to enrage Tobio, and there is an adorable scuffle as Tobio attempts to climb Tooru like a tree and Shouyou taunts Tobio and waves his hands wildly.

It’s not really a surprise that so many of their friends ask Tooru to babysit. He’s actually incredible with kids.

“Iwa-san!” Shouyou shouts, spotting Hajime from his vantage point, and Hajime suddenly wonders if this might be considered slightly creepy.

So he quickly emerges, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “Hey,” he says, as Shigeru quickly jumps up and rushes towards him. Kentarou, not about to lose, follows suit, and they each wrap themselves around one of Hajime’s legs.

“I got here first!” Shigeru yells, and Kentarou kind of growls back.

Tobio runs up after them, stretching out his arms expectantly, his eyes wide with angry tears, and Hajime quickly lifts him up to his shoulders.

“Shou-chan’s still taller,” Tooru sing-songs. He’s watching Hajime and Tobio with a strange look, like he’s supposed to be smiling but has forgotten to.

“We’ll get them, Tobio,” Hajime promises, and chases after Tooru, even with the two other kids weighing him down. Tooru laughs as both Tobio and Shouyou shriek with delight.

“Wow, I am much too old for this,” Hajime groans, after he couldn’t run anymore and had collapsed on the back porch. He sits with Tooru and watches Shouyou and Tobio, energetic as ever, bump a volleyball back and forth. “I think I pulled something.”

“It’s fun, though,” Tooru says, still smiling, leaning on Hajime. “I feel young like this. Don’t you?”

Hajime pushes back against him weakly, half-heartedly, until his traitorous mind notes that this—sitting close together like this with someone who makes his heart swell—feels vaguely, conceivably, plausibly, like a date. A date of two single parents watching over their children’s playdates. That’s a drama trope, isn’t it? Hajime has known Tooru all his life, had remained close friends with him throughout school and even as they went to separate colleges, and he honestly doesn’t know why the idea of dating Tooru had never crossed his mind when so many people initially mistake them for a couple, when Tooru has pretty much always been the most beautiful person in Hajime’s life.

It’s not a date, Hajime insists desperately, shoving Tooru away fully. It’s just not.

Tooru glances at him, grinning, and shouts “Iwa pile!” and tackles him to the ground, and all the kids rush at them, and Hajime blames his flush on the ensuing chaos.

 

* * *

 

“Suzumeda-san,” Ushijima says to a woman who had just entered. “Good eve—”

“I’ve got it, Ushiwaka-chan,” Tooru snipes, elbowing Ushijima out of the way in an entirely unsubtle fashion. “Kaori-chan, the usual?”

“You were busy with Shimizu-san’s martini,” Ushijima points out.

“ _I_ make Kaori-chan’s drinks!” Tooru shoots back, petulant. It’s clear to Hajime that there is no heat in this bickering; Tooru, it seems, just feels uncomfortable with the idea of coexisting with Ushijima peacefully. “You don’t make it the way she likes!”

“Boys, boys,” Suzumeda says, giggling as she slides onto the bar stool on the other side of Shimizu. “I’m not in any hurry; Tooru can make my drink.”

Tooru turns back to his work after a triumphant look at Ushijima, and Hajime rests his chin on his folded arms with a soft sigh.

“Oikawa’s pretty hot, huh?” Hanamaki, to Hajime’s left, murmurs.

It takes Hajime an embarrassingly long moment to react. “What?”

“You _are_ pretty transparent,” Shimizu, on his right, says.

Hajime really doesn’t need any reminders that his behavior is getting ridiculous. Even Tooru keeps sneaking looks at him. “That’s not what I’m thinking about,” Hajime maintains, even though he knows he stands no chance against not just one but two of his exes. “He’s my best friend. I care about him.”

He’s not lying, at least not entirely. This feeling—being happy every time Tooru smiles, feeling his mood lighten every time Tooru laughs—is hardly anything new. Tooru—just Tooru, not Oikawa or Shittykawa or anything else Hajime has called him—has always been one of the most important people in Hajime’s life, and just because he now sees this new side of Tooru—

It’s fine. He’s coming to terms with this. He’s totally, completely fine.

“I feel, as someone who’s worked with you and seen you every day for years and who also knows what you’re into sexually—” Hanamaki sips his beer. Hajime glances at Tooru just to check that he’s still out of earshot. “I think I know what you look like when you’re _absolutely gone_ for someone.”

“Ditto.” Shimizu waits until Tooru has delivered her drink and walked away before looking at Hajime and saying, completely deadpan, “You’re literally pining.”

“Is this an intervention?” Hajime asks, and Hanamaki laughs.

 

* * *

 

At the weekly potluck, in Tooru’s house, Hanamaki keeps raising his eyebrows every time he looks over to Hajime. Hajime kind of wants to punch him, but he also can’t really blame him, because Tooru is half-sprawled over Hajime’s lap, periodically dozing off against his shoulder in between showing Hajime and the nearby Sugawara funny pictures.

“So Ushiwaka-chan brought his son Tsutomu-chan to work yesterday, right,” Tooru says, “So there was this four-year-old kid sitting on the counter with his bowl cut and his school uniform handing out those tiny umbrellas—”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Sugawara held up his hands. “Ushiwaka has a _kid_?”

Tooru grins. “Oh, I haven’t told you this! Okay, see, Ushiwaka-chan lives with like four other guys, right? Tendou-chan and Semi-chan you’ve met, and then Reon-chan and Yama-chan. I’m not exactly sure _who_ had Tsutomu with _who_ , but it's someone's kid and they're raising him together. Anyway, so like, minor in a bar, all the customers gave him candy, and—”

Over Tooru’s shoulder, Hajime sees Hanamaki wiggle his eyebrows again. They really need to talk about this soon. Just because Hanamaki’s sex life is apparently doing great—

Hajime closes his eyes. He should not have had that thought while Tooru is on top of him. He should just… stop having thoughts. He should—he looks at his watch. He should go home, because Tobio has a playdate with Shouyou early tomorrow.

“I gotta get Tobio to bed soon,” Hajime says.

“All right, Iwa-chan,” Tooru chirps, scooting off Hajime’s lap and pretty much onto Sugawara’s. “Good night!” And he leans over to kiss Hajime on the cheek.

Hajime stares at Tooru. Tooru stares back at Hajime, eyes wide. In the background, Hanamaki might have said something, or wolf-whistled, or something equally stupid, but all Hajime can hear is his own internal screaming.

“Ah. Bye,” he manages, because Sugawara’s shoulders are shaking with laughter, and he runs, still screaming inside. He screams all the way home, all through tucking Tobio in, all through his chores. He can still feel the kiss, because he’s a teenager or something, and he screams softly into his pillow.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, after he dropped off Tobio at Bokuto’s place, he steps into Tooru’s bar. Tooru looks up, and his smile freezes. He exchanges a look with Hanamaki, who’s in a corner booth with his sister and salutes Tooru with his beer, and then with Ushijima, who nods. Hajime feels like he should be alarmed, that Tooru has apparently talked to _Hanamaki_ , who has dated both of them, and _Ushijima_ , his “sworn enemy,” about this, but he’s reminded yet again that Tooru’s the world’s most gorgeous bartender.

It doesn’t help that Tooru is wiping his hands with his towel, his long fingers and lean forearms demanding all of Hajime’s attention.

“Iwa-chan, can I talk to you?” Tooru asks, tossing the towel over one shoulder and gesturing to the back hallway.

Hajime nods and follows.

“Makki thinks I should just be honest with my feelings,” Tooru says, fiddling with his collar, which is also not very helpful. “Actually, what he said was _a suit kink is nothing to be ashamed of_ , but that’s not really—”

“Tooru,” Hajime says, because honestly none of Tooru’s words are making any sense, because he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about this one thing since last night.

Tooru looks down at him. “Yes?”

“I’m going to kiss you,” he says; he can’t really help but reach up and take hold of Tooru’s hands. “Is that okay?”

Tooru blinks; his smile comes slowly, a flower blooming. “Works for me. Let’s do it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate Alternate Title: Damn Ushijima’s got some serious game
> 
> Please please please come talk to me on my [tumblr](http://www.chocoholicfangirl.tumblr.com) about this AU, it's really exploded since I last wrote for it and I am so excited!! Also like if you spot any grammatical errors just come slap me


End file.
